"Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With" (1985) Summary and Analysis

Tennessee Williams was gifted with a tremendous amount of both creative and sexual energy. He used the former to produce some of the best and enduring plays in the English language; he used the latter to pursue his homosexual interests with avidity. To all this, Vidal says, "Why not? And so what?" Close friends and sometimes collaborators (Vidal wrote the screenplay for "Suddenly Last Summer") for more than 20 years, Williams and Vidal grew somewhat apart during the last decade of Williams' life because of his drug and alcohol use.

Vidal gave Williams the moniker Glorious Bird mot only because of his play, "Sweet Bird of Youth," but also because "his sympathies were always with those defeated by 'the squares,' or by time...